Participate in discussions regarding the application of these
principles to your wastewater system with industry experts.

Receive the opportunity to review and discuss your sample
results with an EBS laboratory analyst.

Why does EBS exist and our Core Values

EBS has experienced a great deal of growth
and change since the company started in
1997. In our 20th anniversary year, we feel
the importance of conveying who we are as a
company and why we exist. So, whether you
work with us currently or might consider
working with EBS in the future, we would like
to share with you what we believe makes us unique.

Several years ago, we were inspired to discover
our WHY after viewing Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk,
“How great leaders inspire action”. We felt compelled to clarify our
purpose for existence and our Core Values, or as Simon calls it our WHY,
HOW, and WHAT, in that order. We read his book, “Start with Why”,
along with many other leadership oriented books and went on a journey
of discovery about our current state, the company’s future, and our
growth as leaders. We discovered EBS was no different than many
companies who often focus on what you do because it is truly the
clearest and easiest thing to communicate to clients as opposed to
why we do what we do for them.READ MORE

The Eight Growth Pressures of Wastewater Treatment

Part 1 of our series

Industrial wastewater treatment involves
physical, chemical, and biological
approaches. Physical treatment removes
suspended solids, settleable solids, and
oils and grease. Chemical treatment is
often required for effective or enhanced
removes dissolved and colloidal solids,
nutrients, heavy metals, and oils and
grease. And biological treatment
removes biodegradable organics and
nutrients. For biological processes, EBS
focuses on what we refer to as The Eight Critical Growth Pressures when we assess a
secondary system for efficiency and effectiveness. Any factor that affects the microbial
community is called a growth pressure. These consist of BOD loading, pH, toxic or
inhibitory compounds, dissolved oxygen, retention time, nutrients, viability of the
bacteria, and temperature. For the next several newsletters, we will communicate
the importance of each growth pressure and how it impacts the biological
wastewater treatment process.READ MORE

Molecular Lab

EBS continues driving innovation in wastewater treatment.
In doing so, we have implemented new technology to
identify sources of fecal bacteria in wastewater treatment
systems. Many of our clients have permit limits for fecal
indicator bacteria in their effluents. When concentrations
are above these limits in systems that do not have
domestic influences, the question becomes “where is it
coming from?”

Good Preparation and Planning Reduces Wastewater Headaches Associated with Production Outages

Dr. Aaron Peck, PhD, EBS Territory Coordinator, Savannah, GA
Author’s note: The terms mill and plant are used interchangeably in this article to
describe an industrial manufacturing unit, such as a Pulp & Paper Mill, Petroleum
Refinery, Chemical Processing Plant, Meat & Poultry Processing, etc.
Plant (or mill) outages come in two types – scheduled and unplanned. Scheduled outages are
generally annual affairs at roughly the same time each year and are used to conduct
maintenance or other work that cannot be performed while the plant is in full operation. These
outages may involve a shutdown of some or all of the production and ancillary operating
equipment. Sometimes a plant will be required to have a cold shutdown, meaning all power or
steam generation equipment will also be down for a portion of the outage. Planned outages, as
the name implies, are heavily monitored, controlled, and scheduled in terms of timing and
duration. Despite the best planning however, inadvertent losses during shutdown and restart
can create issues and potential permit violations in the wastewater treatment system. Another
area of importance is the duration of the outage, as biomass activity and viability decrease the
longer the bugs go without food. The other type of outage is the unplanned shutdown due to
some operational or equipment problem in the plant. Unplanned outages can wreak havoc on
the wastewater system, increasing the risk of serious system upsets and high effluent BOD
numbers.